WWE NXT Great American Bash 2023: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved
Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s technically dominant but mentally unhinged review of the Great American Bash, "WWE NXT's" latest premium live event! With the yellow brand starting to really pick up steam over the last several months, the GAB was a highly-anticipated event, featuring four championship matches, a "Weapons Wild" grudge match, and the long-awaited debut of Olympic gold medalist and definitely-not-a-rapist-why-would-you-even-think-that Gable Steveson.
So how was the show? What matches were so good that we instantly added them to our endless list of "match of the year" candidates? Which ones, alternately, made us want to go watch some old Dusty Rhodes stuff as a palette cleanser? The answers lie before you! None of that plain, straightforward, just-the-facts nonsense here — that's what our GAB live coverage is for. In this space, it's all opinion, baby. Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about "WWE NXT" Great American Bash 2023.
Loved: To the Mafia go the spoils
The "NXT" Tag Team Championship match opened the show, and it was pretty good — a fun, well-paced traditional tag match with the right amount of schmozz you'd expect from these two particular teams. Stacks Lorenzo and Tony D'Angelo are actually surprisingly complementary considering this is just their ninth televised match as a team; D'Angelo's size and strength meshes well with Lorenzo's willingness to throw his entire body into someone as hard as possible. Even Gallus, a team we actively dislike, was doing good work here. We enjoyed the callback to the way they won the titles with Joe Coffey's help, and we appreciate that not only did it not work this time, but that Tony D countered with a crowbar, which was a callback of its own.
If we're being honest, we're mainly just happy the D'Angelo Family won. Not only because Gallus' reign is over, although thank you. We're happy for Lorenzo, who's going to become the scrappiest babyface to ever scrap make the crowd fall completely in love with him if he's not careful. We're happy for the Don himself, who has finally won his first championship in WWE nearly two full years after his debut. Remember that WarGames match in 2021 between Team Black & Gold and Team 2.0? D'Angelo was on the winning team back then; his partners are either former "NXT" Champions (Bron Breakker) current "NXT" Champions (Carmelo Hayes) or regular "WWE SmackDown" main eventers (Grayson Waller). Only D'Angelo has failed to live up to his initial promise. We love that he's a champion, and that he did it as part of a hilarious but fun story, closing things out in feel-good fashion in a PLE opener. That's awesome.
Loved: Blair on a chair
We weren't sure what to expect from the Roxanne Perez vs. Blair Davenport "Weapons Wild" match, which came in feeling like one of the less important Great American Bash contests but turned out to be ... maybe our favorite one overall? (Yes, yes, we know, we will get to Hayes vs. Dragunov in a little bit.) At the very least it's the one that, we would say, provided the best pay-off for what the feud had promised. The Perez/Davenport story has been all about the two of them ambushing each other whenever they get the chance, so it only makes sense that Davenport ambushes Perez during the latter's entrance, instead of waiting to slowly walk down to the ring herself. That set the tone — the match continued at a hyper-aggressive pace, with both women wrestling like they actually wanted to seriously hurt each other. It made fun, judicious use of weapons, had a great finish that saw Perez get the hometown win (WWE does allow that to happen occasionally) and even managed to impress us with its one botch, with both Perez and Davenport instantly adapting to what had happened instead of what was supposed to happen.
Really great stuff. Plus, Blair was out here respecting the traditions of the "NXT" women's division and making little girls in the audience cry. Somewhere, Mercedes Mone nodded her head in stiff approval before returning to her official crown fitting.
Hated: The lesser of two Gables
Aside from him revealing that he's actually just a fragile balsa wood statue held together with duct tape and dubiously dismissed sexual assault charges, we can't think of a more disastrous debut for Gable Steveson, whose official first WWE match had been delayed for years. He didn't embarrass himself in the ring, exactly, but he also didn't stand out in any way — which is actually worse than being embarrassing. We were expecting a bunch of super impressive suplexes and other "amateur wrestler" moves, the kind that are usually used to establish the idea that this guy right here is the real deal, he can actually win in the 'competitive sport' version of wrestling. But Steveson basically did a bunch of knock-off Kurt Angle stuff until it was time to go to the finish, which was a double countout. Against Baron Corbin, the man who went off on a cinematic quest to find his true gimmick and came back with "You know what would be cool for my entrance video? If there was a sailing ship, right? But like, on fire." This is the man Gable Steveson couldn't beat his debut. Great stuff.
We do have to give a quick "love," however, to the crowd, who relentlessly booed and heckled Steveson in a way we haven't seen before from previous Steveson audiences. The fans in Austin were actively behind Baron Corbin, the man who put a lot of soul searching into deciding what he should put on his new trunks and finally decided "The word 'burn' in big letters And some fire." They chanted his name, they chanted "Let's go Corbin," they even chanted "You're not Gable." He had to adjust and work babyface toward the end of the match because there just wasn't any getting around it — it was probably the most a live wrestling crowd has ever wanted Corbin to win a match, because Steveson is an instant heat magnet. Could that ultimately work out in his favor? Possibly. For now, we just want it on the record that we really, really don't need these two in an extended feud. Please no. Make it go away.
Loved: Strong in defeat
After watching Wes Lee vs. Mustafa Ali vs. Dominik Mysterio, all we could think was, "This should have been the match where Lee lost the North American title." It would have been so good. Well, it was still good — it was a fantastic wrestling match, with a lot of built-in story to play with — but it would have been even better. Lee had a fantastic showing in this contest, kicking out of moves that probably should have been the end of him (including Rhea Ripley powerbombing him through the announce table) but ultimately staying down after a couple consecutive finishers. We think, personally, this would have been a much stronger title loss for Lee, since he looked so strong in defeat here and as a result you can maybe justify the reign of "Dirty Dom," but we won't complain about the fact that we got to watch it.
This match was a great example of using narrative story and physical performance to enhance one another, with the long-simmering beef between Ali and Lee inevitably coming to the forefront even as they were frequently seen teaming up against Dominik, who they both hate. Sometimes they would aim for Dominik and hit each other, or vice versa, which was just perfect. And of course, of course, Mysterio stole the pin after it looked like Ali had it won, and of course he did it with Rhea Ripley's help. There were a lot of really cool spots in this match, as befits a triple threat involving multiple high-flyers, but the story is what sold it.
Hated: A rough match with a great finish
The submission match between Tiffany Stratton and Thea Hail wasn't as good as it should have been, and was basically a well-structured match that wasn't always executed well. Most of the time, we liked what they were trying to do — Stratton pulling out a variety of submission moves designed to work over Hail's back, while Hail's game plan essentially came down to trying to survive until she could apply the Kimura Lock. It was a good plan for a match, but the two women weren't exactly on the same page at first, and at one point it looked like Stratton got spiked on the top of her head. Things got better as the match went on, but then the finish also had some issues with Stratton applying and maintaining the final Boston Crab hold. In the end, everything seems to have worked out okay (assuming Stratton isn't injured) and Hail sold the Boston Crab like a million bucks, finally causing Andre Chase to throw in the towel and force Stratton's victory to save Hail, even though Hail never tapped out.
The "throwing in the towel" trope feels a little weird in a submission match, though it would have helped a lot if commentary was clear on the rules of submission matches — were they really trying to tell us for a minute there that submission matches don't have rope breaks? That said, we actually loved this finish. Thea never tapped out despite the loss, it made both women look strong, and now we have some fun new drama coming to Chase U. Was Andre Chase trying to save his student's career, or did he not believe in her? After all that time of everyone expecting Duke Hudson to turn on Chase U, could it be Chase himself who turns instead? That might be an unlikely scenario, but there are a lot of interesting things on the table after this, and we're excited to see Chase U do something new.
Honestly, the only real reason we gave this match a "hated" is because Thea Hail didn't win the title (COWARDS) and because the part of our soul that isn't yet crusted over with bitterness and cynicism doesn't want to see any internal Chase U strife. And because we have to have three things we hated per review. That's just the rules.
Hated: A great match with a rough finish
By now you've all seen the show and/or read all the tweets about the show, so you know that the match everyone is raving about is Carmelo Hayes vs. Ilja Dragunov. And they should be raving about it! It was awesome, a hard-hitting battle of attrition that took both performers to their limits and took the crowd on an absolute roller coaster. It was fantastic. But would we say we loved this match? No. And there were some parts about it — most notably the finish — that we hated.
Our biggest issue with the match overall is that it didn't do a whole ton with the story beats it used in its build, which recent readers might recall us characterizing (accurately) as a romance and/or love triangle. We weren't expecting the wrestlers to start making out (though that would have been great) but it felt like they could have done more than pick up on the idea that these two were planning to pulverize each other. They certainly did that, but there were other themes missing from this match that were present in the storyline. Moreover, it was clear that the finish had to involve Trick Williams somehow, but all they did was have Trick lift the "NXT" title so Hayes could use it as inspiration, then Dragunov came flying at them on the outside, Hayes dodged, and Dragunov ran headfirst into the championship, which allowed Hayes to pick up the pinfall.
And that was it. None of the character relationships were expanded on or resolved, it was just a good wrestling match.
And that's fine. We wlll concede that maybe some people see this story differently than we do, and at least it does look like we're getting more (please give us more). But on a night that had already seen, in succession, a double countout, major interference, and a "throw in the towell" finish, we think the main event could have used either a clean ending or an absolutely "hold my beer" insane ending, and we didn't really get either.